I could write a cheque for £100 and send it off to Oxford. I haven\'t done this yet. Perhaps the cynic in me says it would just be gobbled up without ever knowing if it achieved anything. So I got to thinking how should participants fund the project in such a way that they would see some benefit and perhaps even have some say on how the funding was directed. So I decided to start this thread where instead on just giving £100, I pledge £100, conditional only on whether other participants pledge a total of £10,000.

If the pledges reach that amount (or such other larger amount that other participants decide upon), then a participants representative would be elected to negotiate what should be funded with the money perhaps ascertaining a few options for the funding participants to vote on. If this allows more participants to see some tangible improvement to their crunching experience, perhaps more crunchers would be willing to donate.

Does this have the potential to achieve significant funding. Lets see; if 10% of the 45000 participants pledge at least £10, and 10% of those pledge at least £50, and 10% of those pledge £100 then the total raised would be over £65,000.

That should be enough to pay for a post or two for a while. I doubt that much will be raised but it is fun to think through the possibility and see what suggestions arise.

I would like to see a participant going to interview some of the core team members once a month or so, record the interview and make it available over the internet for participants. That shouldn\'t cost much nor take much of the core team\'s time. I would also like to see some science being funded because that is what I am really crunching for.

Anyway, ideas and pledges welcome ;)

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Damn good idea, but how much is L100 in real money, you know DOLLARS, lol ;0)

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£100 GBP = $177 USD according to this <a href=\"http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi\">currency converter</a>.

I guess we would have to get a paypal account up and running for collecting the money. (I would like to see gift aid being collected on donations from uk taxpayers.)

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On the continent, we\'re using Euros :o)
100 P=146 E

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Arnaud

SETI@Home already has this type or thing set up. Though, they do not have the ability of the participants to direct the use of the funds.

I too am into this for the science. If you look closely at my signature you will note that the tendency is to put the most effort into those projects that are actively doing science ... well, if you look at absolute totals it is not quite so clear because SETI@Home had nearly a year\'s running start ... but, if you you look at the totals and the RACs you can see that the effort is aimed towards CPDN, Einstein@Home, SIMAP, WCG right now ... with the rest getting some low amounts, Rosetta@Home because the work there will help WCG later, LHC@Home because we need the LHC, and we may start to get actual science work there in the future.

But, at most projects we have low visibility into what all our work means. I have stated this before in other forums and at other times, but, the results go in and we really don\'t get to see much of what it all means. At least not in a form that I think is usable to an average person.

The science papers are fine, but we need more writing like the article done for SETI@Home \"how it works\" etc. So, to my mind, I would like to see more spent in that direction, would that take more servers? More people ... another funded position? Could this be used in that way even?

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SETI@Home already has this type or thing set up. Though, they do not have the ability of the participants to direct the use of the funds.

SETI does have the area on the donation page that says:
Special Instructions for this gift:

If you put in hardware, wages, etc. Then the money is supposed to be set aside for your request.

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Lets see; if 10% of the 45000 participants pledge at least £10, and 10% of those pledge at least £50, and 10% of those pledge £100 then the total raised would be over £65,000.

Perhaps someone from the project could put this in context. What is the budget of the project? For how many years? How does it break-down into sub-projects, staff/overhead/hardware, etc?

Perhaps the team could also suggest possible costs (including full oncosts and overheads) of a new research student? A programmer? etc?

Chris,

I am pleased to see that you have the same minds like me. But I am also sceptical that there will be enough useres that show an interest to support the work on this project otherwise than through their computational power.

Some month ago the same minds were brought up in the Community Forum (look here), but there wasn\'t any further interest to discuss on this earnestly.

I am getting more and more the feeling that people are willing to donate only things that either spend them private benefit or that calm down their twinges of conscience or because they are emotional displeased. Only a few peoples (mainly those that are active on these boards) will be willing to donate of their own.

Just my 2ct.

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Hi Guys
100 GBP = 235.235 AUD. :(
This is a bit out of the price range for a struggling Uni Student.

Hi Guys
100 GBP = 235.235 AUD. :(
This is a bit out of the price range for a struggling Uni Student.

My plan only called for 45 donations of that size. There is room in the plan for 4050 people contributing just 10 GBP = 23.5 AUD and 40500 people who wouldn\'t be in a position to donate that much.

Unfortunately as it stands I expect that far more than 40,500 people won\'t even see this thread. :(

If there were lots of posts on this thread saying

<quote>I pledge 10/50/100 GBP/USD/Eur/AUD provided only that other participipants pledge a total of £10,000 GBP</quote>

then maybe it could make it into a news item or newsletter and get the coverage necessary.

Unless those start pouring in, I think perhaps it will have to be relegated to an interesting hypothetical question of what should a participants\' representative try to negotiate if they were in a postition to negotiate something.

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Perhaps someone from the project could put this in context. What is the budget of the project? For how many years? How does it break-down into sub-projects, staff/overhead/hardware, etc?

Perhaps the team could also suggest possible costs (including full oncosts and overheads) of a new research student? A programmer? etc?

We are currently running at around 170K/per annum, and this has involved some juggling of postions. Basically, research councils fund a post-doc (say £28K/yr for someone with a few years post-doc experience (it varies)). The universities get overheads on this, which bump the figure up to around £42K/yr (covers all the obvious things for an office worker). Then there are travel expenses, maybe some associated hardware, incidentals, which may add another 5K. So for a single post you don\'t expect much change from £50K/yr. At the moment this project requires several post-docs and computer scientists to make it work. Several*£50K= a few*£100K.

That may sound expensive (to those of you who don\'t run your own businesses, anyway), but it\'s actually an extraordinarily cheap way to access the computer power available under PRDC. CPDN costs about as much as a reasonably sized research group in any of our top universities, and just happens to run the world\'s busiest climate change calculation (by quite a way).

Dave, CPDN coordinator for another month.

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Thanks Dave. :D

Interesting numbers that put the situation in context:

170k/47k = 3.6 full time equivalent staff members.

45000/3.6 = 12,441 partipants questions per full time equivalent staff member to be dealt with in addition to their own work.

So what is the reaction to this?

Is it: I must reduce the number of times I ask questions and expect an answer?

Or is it: to go off in a huff because our work is worth so little attention?

Or is it: to think we must go ahead with trying to raise some more finance for them?

Or is it: just suprise they haven\'t tried us for funding?

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The usual difficulty about appeals of this sort is that the money isn\'t recurrent. So its attractiveness for funding posts is limited. On the other hand, it can be a good way of funding one off items.

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170k/47k = 3.6 full time equivalent staff members.

Sounds about right, at least as of the end of February. By then Claudio and I will have left, which gets us in the right ballpark. We do have a few students working on things, and the odd academic chipping in, but those activities tend not to be part of the core project.

45000/3.6 = 12,441 partipants questions per full time equivalent staff member to be dealt with in addition to their own work.

I\'ve been having a day of back of the envelope calculations, too (mostly to do with the new UK govt report on climate change...) and, looking at the phpbb boards, I noticed that our top 6 cpdn staff posters have managed to make 2472 posts from the total of 27891 (8.8% of posts to that boards have been from Carl, Tolu, Martin D, Sylvia, Hannah or me). From where I sit that sounds like a pretty reasonable effort, though I appreciate there may be some dissent on that score :-)

So what is the reaction to this?

Is it: I must reduce the number of times I ask questions and expect an answer?
Or is it: to go off in a huff because our work is worth so little attention?
Or is it: to think we must go ahead with trying to raise some more finance for them?
Or is it: just suprise they haven\'t tried us for funding?

I hope it\'s not the second of these. We have tried funding from the usual academic sources, and generally we\'ve been reasonably successful, although we missed out on a big grant last year -an event was extremely disappointing for us. the plan since then has been to work hard to get the coupled model out and then take it from there.

My own inclination is that participants already contribute mightily via their volunteered flops - hitting them for money as well would feel slightly extortionate. [Though I\'m willing to be persuaded regarding the merits of the idea. :-)] We do have a few ideas in the pipeline, and I for one hope the project has a long and successful future, and I hope to be involved (in one capacity or another) for a while. After all, I\'m only moving about 300m away, and will still be able to pester Carl & Tolu for a beer on Friday nights.

Dave

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Chris,

Aside from personal debt which precludes my contributions to a project. The point I was trying to make is that the visibility of what is gained just really is not there. I donate based on the hope that the CPU cycles do mean something. But, all I can say with assurance is that I have completed \"x\" models, failed at \"y\".

There are scientists looking at the \"stuff\", but, what directly is the result of *MY* contribution is invisible. I think I have said this before. If you do NOT come to this question with a completely blank mind you probably cannot see my point. In other words, if you know where the data is and what it means, well, then you will have a hard time realizing what I am trying to say.

Just as an example, which I was going to write to you about, is the data related to the models that is captured on the Work/Result pages ... what does that tell me? It is not explained anywhere. At one point, I had an explanation page for each and every form and page in the web site. But, since I have been unable to convince any project, or Dr. Anderson of the utilitiy of having a \"Help\" page for each page in the web site the usage numbers of those pages, um, stunk... an example. The data I referring to are the entries in the table \"Perturbed Parameters for Result # 1634604
Sulphur Cycle Experiment\" and the two links below.

But, this is a symptom of the question you are asking. What does it mean to the participant? All I know is that I have done \"x\" models, but do not really have a clear idea of what those models mean, how to interpret the data, how you combine the data from \"n\" models into a something else ...

This is back to the fundamental issue of technical writing. How do you explain something to someone with little or know background? Where do you start? The Wiki now, thanks to your work, has a nice intro on getting started. More data on the basic science you are trying to do, and nothing that ties the two ends together.

Rosetta@Home showed some energy models returned by the participants. But, have been failing to update those as expected ... ahem ... something I have also been a long critic of for almost all projects.... :)

With regard to direct funding, I probably would donate some to most of the projects, and/or BOINC with the only reservation that I have no idea what the funding would be used for... if you were to launch a subscription drive for a widget that will assist the project you might be more successful. I for one, have no idea what the project would find most useful. What would be most useful to me is the trail of bread crumbs from my returned results through the process you go through to the conclusions ...

Anyway, this is the same point I tried to explain in the past ... what does what I am doing mean ... is my model proving that the globe is warming, is it creating showstorms in the sahara, is it a complete waste of time? How the heck do I know ...

SETI@Home has collectted some amount of funding from contributions, some hardware donations (I believe) from participants, but, where did it go? What impovement did it make for the project?

Dave, good numbers, goodd rebuttal for my contention that ya\'ll don\'t communicate enough ... with one or two possible objections ... :) how much of that 10% was talking back and forth between staffers, and two, for those of us that don\'t visit those forums it is like a UK telephone call ... still un-tapped ...

again, *I* don\'t go there as I can see what threads I have not seen all the posts, but within the thread I have to read the whole thing again, I can\'t have it sort to my preference on entry, etc .... it is possible these things can be done, but I have not found the magic yet. Which is why if it is not here in this forum I don\'t see it at all ... and with BOINC the delivery platform, this is going to increase in importance ... but we had this conversation too ... :)

Does this help your question Chris?

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Interesting post, Paul. Is this what you were talking about on the other forum, when you said you wanted each project to document BOINC?

Perhaps some of \"Where does my small part fit in?\" is explained in the OU course: Modelling the climate.
Some things, like the meaning of various parameters, was explained by (Dave Frame)? in the other \'message\' forum, (formerly the Community forum), and should perhaps, be added as part of the documentation somewhere.

Perhaps some of \"Where does my small part fit in?\" is explained in the OU course: Modelling the climate.

I don\'t think it is really. Perhaps we need an explanation of how an <a href=\"http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Ensemble\">Climate Ensemble</a> helps. The trouble is I think it is obvious that an ensemble does help to provide a handle on the level of uncertainty. If this isn\'t obvious to someone else, then I think I would have trouble explaining.

Perhaps my above linked attempt at explaining what a Climate Ensemble is a start. From there we can go on towards explaining how the different ensembles can be used to address different uncertainties. eg initial condition ensemble to get a handle on natural variability and the butterfly chaotic sensitivity.

I think it is a big job to try to \"tie the two ends together\". I also think an expert could do a better job of it than I can. All I can do is try to make a start and hope that it slowly improves.


Ideas on how to explain things better would be welcomed :)

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Some things, like the meaning of various parameters, was explained by (Dave Frame)? in the other \'message\' forum, (formerly the Community forum), and should perhaps, be added as part of the documentation somewhere.

Umm, you mean like
<a href=\"http://www.climateprediction.net/science/parameters.php\">http://www.climateprediction.net/science/parameters.php</a>

(which is linked from <a href=\"http://www.climateprediction.net/science/strategy.php\">http://www.climateprediction.net/science/strategy.php</a>)

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Interesting post, Paul. Is this what you were talking about on the other forum, when you said you wanted each project to document BOINC?

Perhaps some of \"Where does my small part fit in?\" is explained in the OU course: Modelling the climate.
Some things, like the meaning of various parameters, was explained by (Dave Frame)? in the other \'message\' forum, (formerly the Community forum), and should perhaps, be added as part of the documentation somewhere.

Yes it was.

OU course ... my guess is that I would need to come to Oxford to attend? A big problem for those of us that have, ahem, issues with airplanes ... :)

I will look at those links and see if I can \"shoehorn\" them in at least a little bit. Some how.

Anyway, this is certainly why I feel the Wiki is the way to go. Each of us can contribute just a little. Sometimes when I get \"just enough\" information I can start to \"fill in\" pieces that are not obviously missing to those that have more (too much?) experience in some things.

It is one of the reasons it is so hard to write... and why I have been unable to do as much lately as I would like. Doing good writing is extrodinarily hard. And now I have something like four articles to re-write ... :)

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There are scientists looking at the \"stuff\", but, what directly is the result of *MY* contribution is invisible.

I don\'t know if I have begun to answer this question with the ensemble answer, but I\'ll have another go:

The ability to compare a particular model to lots of others with the same parameter except for X is a bit intangible and difficult to express.

It is also a problem in how do you assess the benefit of having an ensemble size of 100,000 compared to ensemble size of 1000. Is there a strong diminishing return with increased sample size? (My brief answer would be nowhere near as strong as I am used to as an auditor because of the multidimensional nature of the data and the nonlinearities in the climate response.)

I have raised queries on this sort of issue with the team and been trying for many months to get Dave Stainforth to come to the board and post something on sampling strategy and related issues that might cover this. It was annoying to be told I couldn\'t share the discussion with other participants. In fairness to Dave Stainforth, he has been to the PHP board to make a post and promised more in the next few weeks (that was nearly 4 weeks ago).

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